The Greek word Hades means, literally, “the unseen.” When the New Testament writers reached for a word to name the realm of the dead, this is the one they used — the direct heir of the Hebrew Sheol, and the reason the two ideas track so closely.
Its most vivid appearance is in Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:23), where Hades is already divided — a place of torment on one side, and comfort, “Abraham's bosom,” on the other, with a great chasm fixed between them. This is the picture that would develop into the idea of an intermediate state: where the dead wait, in comfort or distress, before the final judgment.
Not the same as the final hell
This is the distinction most often lost in translation. Older English Bibles frequently render Hades as “hell,” which collapses two different ideas. Hades is the holding place of the dead; it is not the last word. The Book of Revelation makes the point explicitly: at the final judgment, “Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:14) — Hades itself is emptied and ended. The image of final judgment is a different word again: Gehenna.
The gates that won't hold
When Jesus tells Peter that “the gates of Hades will not overcome” the church (Matthew 16:18), he is using this same picture — the barred, downward realm of the dead — and promising that even death's stronghold cannot finally prevail. For a first-century listener, that was a claim about the one boundary no one had ever crossed back over.
See how Hades connects to Sheol, Gehenna and Paradise in the full glossary → a.fortt.com/glossary-app
How this is made · A Fortt Media project, created & edited by Jon Fortt. Grounded in a curated Scripture database and carefully drafted and audited with the help of AI — described plainly, and written to assume no particular denomination or doctrine. Read the full approach → · Report a correction →
